Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! Sports reported Thursday afternoon that the SEC is "moving closer" to a nine-game league schedule for football, which would align with the Big 10 and Big 12. He also reported that if the SEC does make this move that the ACC would "likely follow suit," meaning we would finally have all four power conferences operating under the same schedule structure.
While there is no reported timeline for when this could possibly go into effect, it could impact West Virginia's schedule in each of the next two seasons, if it were to be adopted for the 2026 season. The Mountaineers currently have a home-and-home scheduled with Alabama, beginning next year in Morgantown and then rounding out in 2027 in Tuscaloosa.
For 2026, Alabama has three non-conference games scheduled with West Virginia, South Florida, and Florida State. Not scheduling a fourth suggests they knew this could be a possibility.
Maybe.
Alabama could consider dropping West Virginia to open up the season with an FCS opponent, but it would come at a hefty price. Not only would they have to buy their way out of the series, but they would also have to pay the FCS opponent to come to Tuscaloosa in its place.
WVU will have UT Martin and a neutral-site game in Charlotte against Virginia next season, in addition to the opener versus Alabama. WVU has made it pretty clear they'd prefer to only play one Power Four opponent in non-league play (Pitt, if possible).
So if Alabama sticks to the plan, it'll be up to WVU to decide if they want to go against their own scheduling philosophy for a year and play two Power Fours or bite the bullet and increase the chance of success in non-conference with a lesser opponent.
The game against Virginia in Charlotte is happening. Wren Baker and WVU see the value of playing that game, especially knowing that they'll have a strong contingent filling up Bank of America Stadium.
I know, this is the first thing that comes to mind when there's any chatter of the Alabama series possibly being axed. As mentioned in Dellenger's report, the ACC is likely to make the same move to nine league games, and right now, they're filled up until the next scheduled Backyard Brawl in 2029.
Can it still happen? Sure, but it won't be easy. They already have two Power Four opponents in '26 with UCF and Wisconsin, play Wisconsin again in 2027 but in Ireland, and then have Notre Dame in '28, which is not an ACC game but a game the league schedules with Notre Dame's loose football affiliation with the conference.
Like WVU, Pitt probably doesn't want to play two Power Fours very often, if at all. For it to happen in 2026, they'd have to buy out of one of those games, but would still be playing two P4 games. The game in Ireland in 2027 kicks off the season in Week 0 and is a massive marketing opportunity for them, or any team, for that matter. They're not backing out of that, so they'd have to boot Western Michigan or UConn to squeeze WVU, but again, it leads to two P4 games. Pretty much the same thing can be said about 2028.
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